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Sunday, 27 July 2008

Swiss Noodles

All regular readers of mmm-yoso know that both Kirk and Cathy can cook. ed (from Yuma)? Well, today will prove that (with some help) he is not completely lost in a kitchen.

I still remember getting to know Tina at a party last spring, and as often happens with me, we began discussing food. When she not only told me that she loves spaetzle, but that she also could prepare those tasty egg noodles, I realized we could make wonderful food together - in particular a flavorful Swiss dish that cried out for homemade spaetzle. Now we'd like to share (at least virtually) this traditional meal that is one of our favorites. Here's how it is done.

Then dice the four or five slices of bacon (I got some applewood smoked bacon from my local butcher, but bacon ends and pieces work well too):

After discarding the large rib ends, chop up two bunches of Swiss chard (green ribbed if possible). By the way, this is a huge bowl:

Then shred approximately a third of a pound of Swiss Gruyere cheese (pictured is a little over half a pound of aged Gruyere in wedges and then grated):

At the same time, you will need to prepare the dough for the noodles. After you mix together two eggs and half a cup of milk, add a cup and a half of flour, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, a half a teaspoon of salt, and a pinch of nutmeg, and beat with a wooden spoon or with the dough stirrer on an electric mixer until the ingredients are fully combined, thick, somewhat stiff, and stretchy. The dough should look like this: At this point, you should have a large pot of lightly salted water being brought to a boil on the stove. On another burner, begin to fry the bacon at medium heat. Cook until much of the bacon fat has been rendered, but do not cook the bacon fully. Then add the chopped onion and mix together and continue frying: When the bacon and onion mixture is ready, add the chard handful by handful and stir. If you wish the resulting dish to have some crunchy parts, add leaves and rib pieces at the same time. For a more uniform texture, separate the ribs and cook them for a minute or two before adding the leafy parts. Reduce heat, if necessary, to prevent overcooking.

The other half of the dish, the noodles, take less time. Back in the day, my grandmother would have spread the dough out on a small hand-held cutting board and sliced strips of the dough into the boiling water. Lacking my grandmother's talent, patience, and wrists, most people today will use a spaetzle press to extrude the noodles. One can also extrude the noodles through a colander, but notice that the perforations at the bottom of the well of this press are not round and are irregular in shape; this flatness and lack of uniformity is key to top quality spaetzle:

When the water is boiling, fill up the utensil's well about halfway, place over the pot, slowly push down, and send the fresh noodles into the boiling water:

Unlike Italian pasta, these egg noodles do not easily overcook, so that one can refill the well and drop more noodles into the boiling water. Using a wooden spoon, stir the noodles and let the water come back to a full boil. At this point the spaetzles are done.

After draining in a colander, the noodles should be added to the frying pan with the other cooked ingredients and quickly stirred together. Place the contents of the frying pan into a bowl and add the shredded cheese to taste. At this point, you may also add fresh grated black pepper (unless, like me, you forget). You will notice that the spaetzle noodles are not smooth and uniform, but rather pitted, bumpy, and irregular. This texture gives these homemade noodles plenty of surface areas so that they interface wonderfully with gravies or sauces. After the ingredients are all stirred together and the cheese has become wonderfully melty and gooey, the dish should look like this: For our meal, Tina and I had previously chopped up a couple of heirloom tomatoes and added a few leaves of fresh basil: After we tossed the tomatoes with the basil, balsamic vinegar, and olive oil, we plated this salad next to our main course: This was more food than two hearty eaters could devour, and probably could serve up to 4 normal people. The heirloom tomato salad was good, but the noodles were supreme. The combination of textures and the creamy smoky flavors made this dish (even though I was at the stove) a success. I have no idea what this dish is called, but with the spaetzle, the Swiss cheese, and the Swiss chard, I guess calling it Swiss Noodles will have to do. Before I got to know Tina, I made the dish with regular packaged egg noodles. It was okay back then, but she just makes things better. Yum!

I was so happy when I saw your post. I went to Switzerland beginning this year to the Graubunden canton. This was one of the local specialties and your dish was almost the exact one we had. I'm a big noodle freak and this is ranked top 5 on my noodle list. This is called Pizokel or Bizochel in romanche.

And, we've been fortunate enough to taste this wonderful dish when Ed and Tina made it for us....it is absolutely divine!! We hope they come over again and make it, but I loved the post and may try it myself...NOT!

Steamy and Chris, Tina's had her press for 20 years.
Most other presses make round noodles.

It really does taste good, nhbilly, and is very rich - nothing like cheese, egg noodles, and bacon fat!

Carol, eating spaetzle as a kid has led me to love most homemade noodles. My two favs in SD used to be the hand cut noodles at the Chinese Islamic place and a lunch special with handcut chicken noodle soup at Seoul BBQ - neither available any more.

Very interesting, cheese cheese, because I first ate something like this dish at a Swiss restaurant near Monterey called Lugano - which is a city in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland very close to Graubunden. I would have given them credit, but their version wasn't all that good - and I developed this recipe myself.

I can't remember how many times I made spaetzle in my 50+ years of married life, and how often friends asked for the recipe. But I am not one of those cooks that measures all the ingredients, so now I can just print your directions and hand them out!
By the way, it's nice to know that Tina did learn something in the kitchen while growing up, haha!

hello, i love your posts on pupuseria cabana....makes me want to try it sometime if i'm ever in the area...the soups, the agua frescas , they all look so good, i'm getting thirsty just thinking about it.

this looks to be a very rich and interesting recipe that i'd like to try out sometime. i've never made my own noodles before. the salad sounds like it would have went well with the pasta too. yum yum